Your government dollars at work. Stella Assange is the wife of Julian Assange. This bizarre directive from Neocon Anthony Blinken (one of the architects of the Iraq War) brings to mind US efforts to blow-up an early opportunity to settle the Ukraine-Russia dispute.
If only those who cheer on new U.S. imperialist wars would consider our deplorable track record. Consider the following excerpt from a recent article by Chris Hedges. The title of his article: "Humanitarian Imperialism Created the Libyan NightmareNATO’s military intervention in Libya in 2011, which overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, resulted in a chaotic and murderous failed state. Libyans pay a horrific price for this catastrophe."
“We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary Clinton famously quipped when Muammar Gaddafi, after seven months of U.S. and NATO bombing, was overthrown in 2011 and killed by a mob who sodomized him with a bayonet. But Gaddafi would not be the only one to die. . . .
The chaos that followed Western intervention saw weapons from the country’s arsenals flood the black market, with many snatched up by groups such as the Islamic State. Civil society ceased to function. Journalists captured images of migrants from Nigeria, Senegal and Eritrea being beaten and sold as slaves to work in fields or on construction sites. Libya’s infrastructure, including its electrical grids, aquifers, oil fields and dams, fell into disrepair....
Western regime-change, carried out in the name of human rights under the doctrine of R2P (Responsibility to Protect), destroyed Libya - as it did Iraq - as a unified and stable nation. The flood victims are part of the tens of thousands of Libyan dead resulting from our “humanitarian intervention,” which rendered disaster relief non-existent. We bear responsibility for Libya’s prolonged suffering. But once we wreak havoc on a country in the name of saving its persecuted — regardless of whether they are being persecuted or not — we forget they exist.
Karl Popper in “The Open Society and Its Enemies” warned against utopian engineering, massive social transformations, almost always implanted by force, and led by those who believe they are endowed with a revealed truth. These utopian engineers carry out the wholesale destruction of systems, institutions and social and cultural structures in a vain effort to achieve their vision. In the process, they dismantle the self-correcting mechanisms of incremental and piecemeal reform that are impediments to that grand vision. History is replete with murderous utopian social engineering — the Jacobins, the communists, the fascists and now, in our own age, the globalists, or neoliberal imperialists.
Libya, like Iraq and Afghanistan, fell victim to the self-delusions peddled by humanitarian interventionists — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power and Susan Rice. The Obama administration armed and backed an insurgent force that they believed would do the bidding of the U.S. Obama in a recent post urged people to support aid agencies to alleviate the suffering of the people of Libya, a plea that ignited an understandable backlash on social media."
Imran Kahn's "crime" was declaring that Pakistan would stay neutral with regard to the U.S. funded war in Ukraine.
I am not on any political team. In my view, both major political parties are thoroughly corrupt. I am guided only by curiosity. It's amazing what happens to one's judgment when one renounces membership in all political tribes and their allied news media (which function as their respective PR departments). It allows you to see things that were previously invisible. Things that constitute evidence of dishonesty and hypocrisy and these things are ubiquitous, sparing no organization and no person.
It's unpleasant to have one's eyes opened like this, but that's part of the price of having access to an unfiltered stream of information. The other part is that you get to (have to) do the work to figure out what is believable. Here's a recent example: alleged corruption of Joe Biden. Many people glue themselves to left-leaning corporate media because they prefer to hear only good things about Biden. This media filtering generates a false consensus in their minds. It causes many people to conclude that Biden walks on water. It also causes many people to conclude that Trump's misconduct somehow exonerates Biden's potential corruption. There is no consensus, however.
Check out the House Oversight Committee's investigation. Lots and lots of evidence is detailed by the committee. One wouldn't know this information if one is intentionally closing one's eyes to everything other than left-leaning corporate media. I propose this thought experiment: In the Oversight Committee report, simply substitute "Trump Family" where ever you see "Biden Family" and ask yourself whether you would be deeply concerned about corruption. When I'm trying to figure out what is going on in the world, I don't give a shit about the Bidens or the Trumps. I'm concerned only about corruption, which inevitably hurts the American People.
One other thing about Biden's conduct bothers me immensely. It's a question we need to ask. Vivek Ramaswamy recently asked it:
The fact that we're sending hundreds of billions to Ukraine without Biden even once articulating why it advances U.S. national interests reeks of corruption. It's now fair game to ask whether the geopolitical disaster known as Hunter Biden has something to do with it. The bipartisan establishment, from @GovChristie to @NRO to @MSNBC, is attacking me for even asking the question. But just think independently for a moment.
[Emphasis added]. Have we been participating in the killing of 9,000 Ukrainian civilians and injuries to another 16,000 (and numerous other casualties of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers) for the reason that Joe Biden had a felt need to demonstrate his love and support for his son Hunter Biden? And see here and here. I ask this because I have not yet heard one reason why the U.S. should have gotten involved in a territorial dispute regarding the Donbas Region. Is the sanctity of the father-son bond the reason the U.S. refused a chance to resolve this war at the outset?
Caitlyn Johnson reminds us of the headlines at the beginning of the Ukraine war:
No nuance here. None of the context, which could have been reported quite succinctly, as shown by comedian Dave Smith:
